Robert Hornak
Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail. com and @roberthornak on X.
In the last few months Zohran Mamdami, the Democratic Party Primary winner in the race for mayor and leading member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has introduced himself to city voters. Well, at least one version of Mamdani.
The youthful Mamdani with his big grin has focused his campaign like a laser beam on issues surrounding affordability and quality of life in the city. His promises for an indefinite freeze for all rent stabilized apartments; free and fast buses; free childcare for every child over 6 weeks; and create a network of city-owned grocery stores offering discounted food; all sound appealing to anyone struggling to make ends meet.
He has plans to create a Department of Community Safety to “prevent violence before it happens by prioritizing solutions which have been consistently shown to improve safety.” Those solutions, however, don’t include putting people in jail for committing crime, as he intends to close down all the city’s jails, and alludes to crime being caused by “failures of our social safety net.”
He talks about these proposals with great passion, while ignoring how he will pay for or implement his agenda, and has managed to convince many voters that this is what will make their lives substantially better. That’s politics and he plays that game very well.
But there is another Mandani. The one that many say wants to initiate what would amount to a full communist revolution in America. Who expresses heavy support for the BDS movement. Who wants to eliminate the police and offer “therapy” to criminals.
Like many in his generation, Zohran has grown up posting every thought on social media. He has made over 16,000 tweets and one intrepid reporter at the Free Press read all of them. We have a strong record of the things he believes on these and many other issues. And they offer deep insight into what he would really like to do, in contrast to the sanitized, politically safe version he wants the voters to judge him on. Here are the highlights:
On capitalism, in 2020 he posted: “Socialism doesn’t mean stealing money from the rich. It means taking back money the rich stole from everyone else,” and “Taxation isn’t theft. Capitalism is.”
On housing, he posted: “People often ask what socialists mean when we say we want to “decommodify” housing. Basically, we want to move away from a situation where most people access housing by purchasing it on the market & toward a situation where the state guarantees high-quality housing to all.”
On law enforcement, he posted: “In NYC, 99% of officeholders are Democrats, yet they refuse to defund cops who murder with impunity. Electing Democrats isn’t enough. We need a political revolution” and “From Minneapolis to NYC, cops brutalize & murder us because they can do it w/ impunity. We don’t just need more account- ability – we need fewer police. But we won’t get either until we break their political power.”
On prostitution, he posted: “We need to repeal the #Walking- WhileTrans ban, decriminalize sex work & get the cops out of people’s lives.”
On the October 7 terrorist attack, he posted his official statement: “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours. Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come. The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
No condemnation or even mention of Hamas, with the blame apparently falling entirely on Israel.
There is an entirely different Mamdani that he isn’t introducing to the public, and when confronted he denies allegations of antisemitism and communism. He eloquently declared at a 2021 DSA conference, “the end goal of seizing the means of production” while unpopular should still be championed. This appears to be the real Mamdani, the one he doesn’t seem to want the voters to look too closely at.
